Heroic Age
The Heroic Age of CS began with Jennifer Walters becoming She-Hulk and ended with the finale of the Skrull Invasion. The She-Hulkening When Jennifer Walters went missing, Natasha Romanoff attempted to discover what has happened to her. She was injured in the process, but learned that some of Bruce's blood samples had gone missing as well. The trail went cold for some time, with both Bruce and Betty worrying over Jen's disappearance. A transmisson from Doctor Doom alerted the Avengers to the fact that Doom had taken Jen. Bruce and Bucky left the Tower immediately, followed closely after by most of the remaining Avengers. Upon arriving in Latveria, Hulk engaged Doom in combat while Bucky seached for Jen. He found her, but she'd lost a considerable amount of blood and was in very bad shape. While the other Avengers fough hordes of Doombots outside, Bruce realized that the only way to save Jen was to give her a blood transfusion immediately. As expected, giving Jen his blood caused her to hulk out, and she began destroying Doom's castle. Inner Space Despite the other Avengers believing her to be dead after Ultron's attack, Jan found her self stuck in an unknown dimension, which she assumed to be an alien world. Her arrival to Inner Space was incredibly disruptive, and Jan was immediately captured by forces of a warlord known as Gouzar, who assummed her to be part of a rebel faction. She was imprisoned for some time. Shortly after escaping from Gouzar's stronghold, Jan encountered an alien pirate woman named Ritch-Ellatali who possessed a communcation device that allowed them to talk. With no other options, Jan agreed to aid Ellatali in her fight against Gouzar with the promise that she would help her find her way home. Thor, feeling guilt over having "killed" Jan, looked for her in Valhalla and in Hel, and attempted to make a bargin with Hela in order to bring her back to life. When he learned that her soul was not there, he searched for her in all the afterlives that he could think of, and, finding her nowhere, began to suspect that she was still alive. He informed Steve, who was tentatively hopeful. Tony, on the other hand, was very disbelieving. After an attack on the rebel base in Inner Space, Ellatali gave Jan the information she needed to get a signal out. Janet returned to the city where she had started this whole thing and got an alien named Cru-sani to send an Avengers Emergency broadcast signal out. Steve, Bobbi, Clint, Peter, and Thor all shrank down to the microverse and found Jan, who refused to leave until they deactivated the city defenses. They managed this, Jan got a brief goodbye with Ellatali, and then they returned to normal size. Broken Arrow A chance encounter with a mysterious vagrant led Bucky and Natasha to discover that some of the sleeper agents Bucky trained during his time as the Winter Soldier were still be active. This vagrant was one of them: Leonid Novokov. After a brief fight with Bucky, Natasha managed to subdue Novokov and take him into SHIELD custody, however he remained silent on the location or status of any of the other sleepers. Execute Program For some time, Extremis had been causing problems for Tony. Eventually, he lost control of the armor, which attacked those in the tower. Turned out that he got hacked. By Justin Hammer. Tony told Natasha how to access the kill switch for the armor, then flew over to Justin Hammer's mother's house, wrecked the garden, and punched Justin in the face. Meanwhile, Bruce and Natasha faced down a hulkbuster armor, Jen, Bucky, Bobbi, and Betty took down a set of stealth armor, and Steve, Jan, and Peter faced a rather generic, old armor model while looking for Pepper and MJ. Demonic Invasion and the Death of Loki Unbeknownst to anyone (except perhaps Loki), Thor's travels through various planes of existance and dimensions had stirred up a flurry of demonic activity, and a certain entity's attention was drawn to Earth. Portals began to open periodically. Jan and Pepper's spa day was interrupted by Mindless Ones in the subway, and Jan left to assist several SHIELD personel, and had the misfortune of meeting Eric O'Grady (who was quickly knocked unconscious by a Mindless One). Steve quickly arrived and between the two of them and SHIELD, they were able to hold off the attack long enough for Doctor Strange to close the portal. Things were quiet for some time, until three portals opened up in New York City. Teams of Avengers were deployed to each location - Hulk and Jocasta were up against Mindless Ones in Central Park, Steve and Rhodey fought a giant worm in the subway, and Jan, Bobbi, and Carol Danvers fought fire breathing demonic birds at the Washington Arch. Each team was successful against their opponents, until Dormammu appeared at the Arch. Loki arrived on the scene, apparently intent on helping the Avengers. The battle was hard, with Dormammu strong enough to bring even Thor to he knees, and Loki sacrificed himself to destroy him. Thor, who had been there for the last minutes of the battle, was heartbroken at the loss of his brother. Journey to the Center of Bruce Dormammu's invasion of Earth had left a few demons behind, or perhaps one just happened to find it's way to him, but Bruce found himself with a demon in his head. He fell suddenly ill and then unconscious, and it took Doctor Strange to open a path into his mind to exorcise the demon. While both Tony and Steve attempted to aid him, it was Bruce's cousin, Jennifer Walters, who finally managed to get through to him and cast the demon out. The Return of Loki Thor, unable to accept that his brother was gone for good, recalled the deal he had made with Hela in return for Jan's soul. As it had never been collected upon, he went before Hela once more to go through with the deal - this time in return for his brother. Hela agreed, and what she asked for in return was a pledge of protection from Thor - protection for Loki, ''that he would be brought to no physical harm. Thor agreed to these terms. He traveled to France, where he found Loki - a child with no knowledge of who he was living on the streets - who ran from him on first sight. He pursued him and eventually triggered in him some memory of who he was - Loki remembered that he was ''Loki, but had no memory of the majority of his life. He did, however, recognize that Thor was indeed Thor, his brother, though all grown up. The two returned to New York together, where the Avengers were not too pleased to find that Loki was alive once more, with several doubting that the child was Loki, and if he was, that he truly didn't remember anything that he had done. Cut Off One Head Steve was informed by SHIELD that there had been an increase in Hydra activity as of late. Determined to get the jump on a potential problem for once, he and Bucky went to a site where they believed they would find Hydra and/or Lukin. Instead, Hydra captured Steve and shot Bucky, leaving the latter to bleed out upon the ground. Thankfully, SHIELD Agent Sitwell got to Bucky and he was rushed back to the infirmary. Sitwell informed Natasha and Jan about what was known of what happened, and they began to plan a rescue mission. Bucky, not content to wait until he had healed, tried to get up while still pretty badly injured and attempted to go after Hydra. Bobbi stopped him and gave him something to knock him out. As soon as they could, Bucky, Natasha, Jan, and Bruce went to the location where they believed Hydra was holding Steve. They got past all the guards easily - too easily, in fact - and found Steve strapped to a chair, with something being injected into him. They got him free and returned with him to the Tower. Overnight, a chemical agent Hydra injected into Steve's bloodstream deactivated the super soldier serum, and he woke to find himself physically like he had been before he became Captain America (thankfully without many of the health problems that had been caused by scarlet fever, as the healing his body had done under the serum still held up). Unable to lift his shield, he asked Bucky to step into the role of Captain America. Though there was some hesitation, Bucky agreed, and Jan made him a very shiny suit that drew attention to things that probably helped distract people from the fact that there was someone else wearing the suit now. BuckyCap and Red Skull Shortly after recovering Steve, Red Skull appeared in the streets of New York City, declaring that Captain America was gone and a whole lot of very Red Skull-y things. Unfortunately for him, Captain America of the Bucky Barnes flavor was very much around and made his debut fighting him. Bucky eventually followed Skull to an underground area, where he discovered that Red Skull was none other than Lukin - who apparently had Schmidt's mind inhabiting his body. The Might of Mjolnir Jan and Steve - who still had the serum deactivated - took a walk in Central Park. When they passed by the Bifrost site there, Thor and Loki just happened to return. Distracted by the reunion, they did not notice that bystanders were being turned to stone, and thus when Grey Gargoyle touched Thor and turned him to stone, they were unprepared. With a depowered Steve and Loki, Jan was the only Avenger at the site able to fight. She was overwhelmed by the combined attacks of Songbird with her sonic screams and Grey Gargoyle, who petrified her. Hulk arrived at the scene, but despite being the strongest there is, he too was turned to stone. With things looking dire, two newcomers arrived on the scene. Calling themselves Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, they managed to fend off the two villains and keep them from getting to Mjolnir, which was Grey Gargoyle's intended goal. Loki, in turn, suggested to Steve that he should try to pick up Mjolnir to defend them, and he tried and succeeded, Mjolnir allowing him to lift her in defense of them all. Between the three of them, Songbird and Grey Gargoyle were overwhelmed. Songbird fled the scene, but Grey Gargoyle was knocked out and captured. Not knowing if the petrification was permanent or not, Scarlet Witch used her magic to unpetrify the Avengers and the civilians, before she and her brother departed from the scene. Overjoyed that Jan was alive and no longer petrified, Steve enthusiastically kissed her in public before the two of them returned the Tower. Once back, Steve began to cough. He quickly developed a fever and fell unconscious. He was moved to the infirmary and was in bad condition until something about his state triggered a resurgance of the super soldier serum, which cured him of his illness and returned him to his prior physical state. Reset Natasha went upstate to visit Logan and ran into Quentin Quire, who tried to get into her head. He succeeded and ran into some very creepy stuff there. Upon returning to her apartment, Natasha woke up with no memory of herself as Natasha Romanoff, instead believing herself to be someone called Nancy. Bucky, worried, left her alone in the apartment and went to get Logan. Between the two of them and Quentin, they attempted to get Natasha to remember, and eventually succeeded. Ionic Breakout Jan ran into Wanda outside of the Van Dyne Industries office building. While they were talking, an ionic being broke out of a nearby lab and uncontrollably crasheed into the lobby. Jan and Wanda attempted to contain it, with Jan adament that they not hurt if after seeing it briefly take human form. Wanda used her chaos magic to fully contain it for a few moments, upon which the being took on almost solid human form, told them his name was Simon, and asked them for help. He then destabilized, breaking through Wanda's spell, and seemingly dissapeared. The use of magic exhausted Wanda and she collapsed. Jan had her taken to the Avengers infirmary. Why We All Hate Reed Bruce and Betty took Reed Richards up on an invitation to do research in a different dimension. The original plan was to be gone for just a week - however, once they were in the other dimension, they learned that time passed differently there, and that while only a week would pass in the normal dimension, they would be stuck where they were for six months. During the course of being stuck there, they learned that their baby was going to be a girl. When they returned home, Betty was very close to being due. The other Avengers were shocked to learn that they had been gone for six months and that Reed hadn't informed them of the time change between the two dimensions before hand. Both Jan and Tony offered help in getting everything the Banners needed for the baby done. Very shortly after returning, Betty delivered her and Bruce's daughter, and named her Anthony Karen Banner - or Annie for short. Diplomatic Trips With Clint sitll missing and the Skrulls still a threat, Jan and Steve pushed forward with plans to meet with foreign super hero teams to coordinate with. They took a quinjet to England, where they met with Pete Wisdom, head of MI13. He told them new information acquired from a skrull who had taken on the form of John Lennon and defected to their side, specifically that if they were to find and remove the Skrull Queen, they might be able to destabilize the skrull invasion effort. The two also met with the rest of MI13 - Spitfire, Blade, Excalibur, Captain Britain, and the Black Knight. New Avengers Shortly after returning from London, Steve and Jan were visited by Kate and Bobbi. Kate stated that she wanted to join the Avengers. Being suitably skilled and sponsored by Bobbi, she was accepted onto the team, though whether or not she will take on the name "Hawkingbird" remains to be seen. Still low on power, and with both Jan and Steve having talked it over, Wanda was invited to the tower and shown around. She was given an official invitation to join the team, and one was also extended to her brother. Wanda accepted the invitation and was given an Avengers ID card and Avengers level security clearance in the tower. Asgardian Invasion Sif arrived from Asgard with the Lady Sigyn and her two sons in tow, with the intent to find Thor and bring him home. She found Thor in Central Park and gave him a traditional Asgardian greeting - meaning the two fought with each other for a bit and suitably freaked out a portion of New York, before they returned to the tower. Over the course of the next few days, both Sif and Sigyn learned that Loki has been reborn as a child, to different reactions from each. Magnet Problems Magneto, after having been hounded by Juggalos for far too long, ended up making several random calls, one of which reached Spider-man. Being far too kind hearted, Peter attempted to help Magneto with his problem, even going so far as to show up and physically try to help. In an event that paralleled his first meeting with Deadpool, Peter saw Magneto kill the Juggalos, and this very understandably crushed poor Peter. He returned to the tower in a particularly awful mood, with no knowledge of where Magneto had gone. The Symbiote Secret Invasion: Finale